“Oh it’s great to be a cardinal” said Gregory Lott, Otterbein University’s new athletic director.
Lott is replacing Dawn Stewart, and comes from Denison University with a decorated background in athletics. Lott has been an associate director of athletics, associate professor of health, and also a head coach at the Division III level and assistant coach at the Division I level.
"I’m just really enjoying learning the way of the land,” said Lott. "It’s a fun mixture of learning and listening and then also trying to get a bunch of things done right away, but it’s a phenomenal community, and a great group of people to start working with."
The culture that Lott wants to bring to Otterbein is focused on two big areas.
”I want it to feel more like a big cohesive family, and I don’t want athletics to feel like a separate union so I think that there’s just a lot of places where we’ve gotta become more visible and more communicative and just figure out how to best connect across the university,” said Lott.
The second area Lott is focusing on begins internally.
”I’m gonna try to challenge our coaches and our student athletes to really be intentional with the sport experience and think about the ways in which can create habits of mind, and develop certain kinds of competencies that are present in our overall education mission,” said Lott.
Otterbein student, Zandi Jotia, said, ”He seems excited to be here on campus, and he is here to help the students, he seems interested in learning about the students on campus”.
As Lott spends his first year here at Otterbein, he aims to cultivate relationships.
”You know, in year one I think it’s mostly about starting to develop really good relationships just learning the culture, learning the campus and getting to know people and developing partnerships and you know there’s already been a great start as far as that’s concerned,” Lott said.
Students can contact Lott by simply “popping in and saying hello,” or sending him an email. He can be contacted at lott3@otterbein.edu.
